I Would Have Been Better Off Staying Poor

Over half a century of writing, British detective author Rene Brabazon Raymond (1906–1985) published around ninety crime novels and adopted several pseudonyms. The most celebrated of them is James Hadley Chase. "I, like a bloodhound, pick up a trail and sense what the reader wants. And what they will buy" — this is how the master explained the success of his novels, willingly revealing the golden secret: readers are attracted by "action and rhythm." In the 20th century, there was no place for unhurried old-fashioned stories in which an eccentric detective investigates the mysterious murder of an aristocrat in the cozy setting of a country mansion; according to the laws of modern times, a detective resorts to the revolver almost as often as to deduction. This collection includes novels from the 1950s and 1960s that demonstrate different facets of the writer's creativity: "Mallory" and "Spring in Paris" — stories about the adventures of Martin Corridon in the tough detective genre, as well as standalone noir novels "Just Another Fool," which inspired the 1998 film "Palmetto," and "I Would Have Been Better Off Staying Poor."